The Republic of South Africa has a special place in my heart. It's a country that I've visited nine times. It's where my mother was born and spent the first 34 years of her life. It's where many members of my family live to this day. And it's where my grandfather, a white civil rights attorney, died under mysterious circumstances while defending a black man during the era of Apartheid.

For most people, though, South Africa is merely the source of fleeting images from the past two decades: the release of political prisoner Nelson Mandela, who had spent the preceding 27 years in jail, in 1990; the fall of Apartheid, the system of government-imposed racial segregation that had reigned for 46 years, in 1991; the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, his partner in ending Apartheid and the last white South African president.

In 1993, there were...